SLY GUY – What do Jon Stetson and Santa Claus have in common? They know what you’ve been thinking.

Mentalist entertains at Cape Codder resort

Psychic Jon Stetson's greatest ability may not be getting into people's heads and reading their minds. It's knowing how to grab the attention of an audience and hold them rapt for almost two hours.

Stetson displayed his impressive skills as a showman as well as his uncanny intuitive abilities during “Jon Stetson's Psychic Mind-Blowing Comedy Show” on a recent Saturday night at the Cape Codder Resort & Spa in Hyannis. The intuitionist/mentalist/comedian is a favorite fixture in the hotel's dinner theater entertainment series and it's easy to see why. He's witty, clever, and engaging. His website lists some impressive credentials. He does 300 live shows a year, has performed at the White House and is a consultant for the CBS series The Mentalist.

Dramatically dressed all in black, Stetson commanded attention the minute he strode into the packed room. He performed a variety of sleight-of-mind games throughout the fast-paced show which ran a solid two hours without intermission. His psychic brand of entertainment is heavily spiced with visual and physical comedy. His humorous asides to the audience have a wink/wink quality punctuated by his exaggerated facial expressions.

Stetson's highly interactive show banks on audience participation. The affable host is a master at engaging people in his act, even those who appear a bit skeptical. Although Stetson claimed women are 100 times harder to read than men, most of the participants he picked were females. Go figure.

Stetson claimed to be able to pick up on the intuitive energy of the group. It was a bit disappointing, however, that he didn't reveal people's deep, dark secrets, the kind of dirt unearthed by the psychics on TV's Medium and The Mentalist. Stetson's more of a numbers man. He performed a succession of mind games most of which consisted of guessing people's birthdays, the numbers rolled on dice or picked in a deck of cards, or numbers people imagined in their heads. This particular evening Stetson was on top of his game. He never missed.

Some of his feats were more impressive than others. He was right on at guessing the name of the first boy a woman kissed, the serial number of a dollar bill hid in an envelope, and the phone number of a woman's closest friend, but he missed on her friend's first name. He also correctly guessed not only one middle-aged woman's birth date but the exact time she was born.

Stetson depends on visuals to add intrigue to his games. After asking a woman to write down the name of an American city, he proceeded to rip a travel map into strips and then into small fragments. He finally held up a tiny piece of paper that contained the name of the city. It turned out to be Boston and he was right again.

This reviewer remained skeptical until asked to participate in one of the games. Stetson chose several of us to pick a random page in a book and to remember the first word on that page. To my amazement he nailed every answer, including mine.

Before the show started, Stetson asked a woman to keep a number in her mind. Toward the end of the show he wrote a series of four numbers in four columns. None of them were her number. Did he finally miss? No. It turned out that the numbers in each column added up to her number.

Is Stetson the real deal? You can find out for yourself when he returns for another performance on May 3. What's no mystery is that he provides an entertaining show that will leave you wondering about the psychic phenomena long after the fun and games are over.

Dinner theater 2014 continues through May at the Cape Codder Resort & Spa, 1225 Iyannough Road, Route 132, Hyannis. Tickets are $59.95 per person for dinner and show; $25 for show only. An overnight package, $119 per person, includes dinner buffet, show and room. For schedule and reservations call 855-861-4370 or visit www.CapeCodderResort.com/